Becoming Aware of Yourself

By Jayaram V

This article is incomplete. To read the complete article you may purchase the book Think Success now available in two volumes

Self-realization is a difficult goal, which very few can ever realize. But self-examination, self-analysis and self-observation are within everyone‘s reach. In the following paragraphs you will know how to look at your conscious self in order to know more about yourself than what you usually do. The advantages of becoming familiar with your conscious self are many. With the knowledge gained from self-observation, you develop a deep insight into your behavior and your thinking, which will give you the courage and the conviction to transform yourself, if necessary, according to your goals and aspirations.

We are born with certain basic characteristics, such as our physical features and our intelligence, which stay with us for life. We cannot change them or remove them, without hurting ourselves or doing some damage to our minds and bodies. Whether we like them or not, we have to accept them and learn to live with them for the rest of our lives, with some adaptations and coping mechanisms. From the perspective of eastern philosophies, what you are born with is your inherited karma. How you feel about it and what you do with it, influences your self-esteem, your world view and your way of life.

Then we have other qualities and features, which do not come to us from birth, but which we cultivate in the course of our lives, as we grow and learn from our experiences and perceptions. We acquire some of them at a very early age, before we even learn to walk or talk, such as how we respond to fear, how we display our anger and frustration and how we secure love, attention and security from others by manipulating them and their emotions. These learned responses and behaviors are usually integrated into our consciousness in our very early childhood and become part of our core personality, influencing our thinking and attitude for the rest of our lives.

Although it does not come by birth, in a way we inherit our learned behavior from our parents and peers by observing them, imitating them, obeying them and trusting them. With few exceptions, our early influences stay with us for the rest of our lives and become part of our core behavior and personality. They determine what we will become eventually. Whether we will become extroverts or introverts, sensitive or intuitive and trustful or distrustful, depends upon what we go through in our childhood and what we learn out of it. It will determine how we think and feel how we relate with the external world and how we interpret our perceptions and interactions, as we become adults...